Study: Working-age Latino immigrants 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19

SACRAMENTO — The COVID-19 pandemic was even deadlier for working-age Latino immigrants than previously known, according to a recent University of Southern California study.

Latino immigrants between the ages of 20 and 54 are nearly 11.6 times more likely to die from the virus than U.S.-born people who are not Latino, according to the study.

The figure “astonished” the study’s lead author Erika Garcia, an assistant professor of preventative medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at USC.

The research, published in the journal, Annals of Epidemiology, was based on data from 10,200 death certificates of Californians whose deaths occurred between February 2020 to July 2020.

Researchers found that those who died during over that period were predominately Hispanic, “consistently older, more likely to be male, had lower educational attainment, and most were foreign-born,” according to the study.

It’s “very heartbreaking to think about how much mortality is being experienced through this and this doesn’t include what happened during the winter,” Garcia said.

The report paints a grim portrait of how the pandemic has ravaged Latino communities throughout The Golden State. So far, the virus has claimed the lives of nearly 27,000 Latino Californians.

Black Californians from the same age group were five times more likely than whites to die from the virus, according to the study.

Garcia said public health intervention and public health policies need to be targeted to the racial and age groups most impacted by the pandemic.

Latinos makeup 40% of California’s population, yet represent nearly half of the state’s COVID-19 cases and deaths. Only 22% of Californians who have received their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine are Latino, state data shows.

“You really do need to tailor the intervention and campaigns to target those that are high risk,” she said.

Arturo Bustamante Vargas, an associate professor of health policy and management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said it’s clear immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, are highly vulnerable to the virus.

Bustamante Vargas said that vulnerability stems from three different factors.

First, Latino communities are less likely than other groups to have access to health care and are known to disproportionately suffer from health conditions like diabetes and hypertension.